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Review by conrad_davis 
Posted: 59 days ago
member for 1.2 years, 14 visits, last login: 59 days ago
 Hamilton,Butler,OH
 $45 per month
 about 2 days
 Cincinnati Bell
 "speed never varies."
 "won't increase your speed unless you complain. no naked dsl"
 "good deal for the money"
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I have used zoomtown for 8 years now. I started out when the product was 768kbps download and 384kbps upload. They upgraded their network to about 5mpbs but didn't budge my speed until I complained. I hear some people talk about the supposed higher speeds from the cableco's but it always seems to bog down in the evening when everyone is on and honestly, I do not need more than 3MBPS. For $45/month I"m getting a broadband connection and a lifeline landline.
Followup comments:  wharpig
join:2008-08-29
| ... speeds are normally set automatically for what the line can handle. Cinbells dsl connection now automatically adjusts the speed when it is first setup and locks you in at what you can train at and hold a connection. If you were set low chances are you have had problems with the connection in the past. If a technician adjusted your speed generally that causes issues with holding a connection. If it is holding a good connection then it could have just been a provisioning issue on Zoomtowns end that was "capping" the connection. I use to work for there tech support and have saw many people get there speed raised only to callback days later and there connection is constantly giving them problems. Thats why the techs are trained to say they cant adjust your speed. | |
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 Review by bjf123
UPDATED: 91 days ago
member for 8.6 years, 3398 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Hamilton,Butler,OH
$35 per month
Cincinnati Bell
"Consistent connection. Good tech support."
"Scans from other users."
"Great value for the money."
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I've had Cincinnati Bell's Zoomtown ADSL product for a number of years now. During that time, there have only been a handful of times I was unable to connect when I wanted. The claimed speeds are 768 down and 384 up. My tests have almost always been close enough, in the 680 and 340 range. The nature of the connection is everyone has a private IP. Mine is in the 10.137 range. They recently changed their service so that I no longer need to log in. As long as my computer is on, I'm connected. If I do turn off my PC, the next time I connect, I might end up with a different public IP. I do get scans from other users in the 10.137 IP range. The few times I've gotten a number of scans from the same IP, and by a number of scans, I'm talking 50+ in a short period of time, I've contacted the abuse department at Zoomtown. The scans have always stopped in a few days. Overall, I'm quite pleased with my service.
Update: I moved about five years ago. The transition to my new address took longer than it should have. After numerous phone calls over the span of 5 or 6 days, I finally got through to someone who had the knowledge to dig into the problem. Turns out the phone company had two databases of information related to the DSL service. One had been updated with my new address, while the other still had the old address, which was overriding the order to turn on service at the new location. Once the incorrect database was updated, the service was working within the hour.
Also, I was able to combine my local, long distance, wireless, and DSL services into one package. This is saving me about $20 per month over the cost the the individual services.
Update 2: I've really had no issues since the move almost five years ago. I have switched my hardware from a PC running Windows with a Linksys router to multiple Macs connecting via Airport Extreme. Everything still works fine.
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Review by idavenport
UPDATED: 108 days ago
member for 1.1 years, 31 visits, last login: 73 days ago
Cincinnati,Hamilton,OH
$40 per month
"Very Reliable Connection and Does not slow down a lot during peak hours"
"need to boost speed and there Tech Support needs a lot of improvement"
" It is a good value for broadband and I would recomend it"
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We purchased zoomtown about a year ago through Cincinnati Bell after we got fed up with road runner's price and very slow speed in my neighborhood. When we signed up it only took them 3 days to activate and to provision my phone line to use zoomtown. The setup was very easy. I have had no problems so far and it has been a very reliable service.
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 Review by artesian79
Posted: 202 days ago
member for 6.9 years, 370 visits, last login: 14 days ago
West Chester,Butler,OH
Contract price not specified.
"Inexpensive - my company pays the bill"
"Too slow; tech support is more difficult than RoadRuner; bandwidth planning is not a strength"
"Didn't think I'd miss RR, but Zoomtown makes it so."
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It took 3 different techs coming to the house to get it working. They didn't show up at the promised time. They DID stay until we had service.
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Review by trin20t
Posted: 221 days ago
member for 221 days, 0 visits, last login: 221 days ago
Cincinnati,Hamilton,OH
$54 per month (12 month contract)
about 2 days
Cincinnati Bell
"Very fast consistent speed over Roadrunner,reliable"
"Not explained as well as it could be on it's company site,Zoomtown home page not that friendly"
"Could be better,but faster and more reliable then Roadrunner"
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I had some issues with Cincy Bell not getting my $60 deposit at first,and my location wrong,but once they did,I was set. A tech did install and test the lines,but he didn't do any repair.
Fuse.net access was fast and line was working great.
Ordered Zoomtown a good two days after,and was sent a basic one computer connection modem the next buiness day,and was shocked to learn my DSL was ready two days before the due date!
Had some jack issues,and a tech came out again(yesterday),to repair finally.
I learned the jacks were very bad in my housing project.
But this was fixed,and I have it working as promised.
I have up and surfing at 1.2mbps speed down and 612kbps upload speed. The site says you get "up to" 5mbps download and 768kbps upload speeds. I'm seeing almost correct upload speeds but slower download. But atleast it is faster then I had with Roadrunner. It was never consistent.
It was always under 1 mbps. For cable it was as bad as using the old Zoomtown speed!
I have had Zoomtown before in the past,back in late 2000 to 2004,so I know what to expect and how to hook it up myself.
Back then speeds were much slower. 768kbps download,and 386kbps upload.
I would see 388kbps download and 176kbps upload back then. So the speed is much better to me.
I'm not complaining at all!
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Review by ff2366
Posted: 241 days ago
member for 241 days, 8 visits, last login: 7 days ago
Mason,Warren,OH
$20 per month
about 7 days
Cincinnati Bell
"Consistent, solid bandwidth. Modem doesn't require a lick of babysitting / reboots etc."
"None that I can think of."
"Best deal around. Threw Sprint and Time-Warner out on their ear 6 months ago and haven't looked back."
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I work at home 3 days a week. All to regularly my Time-Warner connection would lose it's network access. I run a constant ping test in the background to a couple of DNS servers to validate when and where the link failures occur and it my connections would die several times a day. 7 visits by Time-Warner over a 3 month period, movement of router, replacement of wires, validation of signals - nothing could fix the fact that the Time-Warner network simply isn't built for high availability. My gut tells me that they perform network maintenance and restarts anytime day or night as they saw fit with no regards to the folks who subscribed to the service and used it for work. One day my VPN connection died - I looked out my front window and sure enough, the Time-Warner truck was down the street and the tech has his head buried in the roadside box. Service was restored 20 minutes later.
The other positive piece is the fact that I haven't had to look at the Cincinnati Bell DSL modem since it was installed. Haven't had to restart, reboot - nothing. It has worked well since day 1.
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Review by beaker87
Posted: 263 days ago
member for 8.1 years, 181 visits, last login: 193 days ago
Loveland,Clermont,OH
$15 per month
Cincinnati Bell
"bundle price [$30 reg], newsgroups"
"overall speed"
"to bundle or to not bundle..."
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have had alternately cable and adsl, 2-3 yrs at a time, over the past nine years. all local offerings piggy-back the two main biggins' Time-Warner & Cincinnati Bell and are slightly cheaper but mostly watered down. It may be 'bout time to check TW's latest 7 Mbps option...although I know that I'd need to start paying for a premium news server as my previous experience with RR nntp's was crap [and a few folks that I know do cable say it's still the same]. Westell modem was sent next day comin' on 3 years ago when I was still using XP. Company sells ONLY "Up to"...5 Mbps/768 up. consistently got w/XP and get w/Vista 1.2 Mbps
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Review by puphus
Posted: 309 days ago
member for 6.6 years, 211 visits, last login: 38 days ago
Cincinnati,Hamilton,OH
$65 per month
about 7 days
Cincinnati Bell
"OK speed for the price & not Time Warner"
"A few out packet errors, could be faster"
"Best for what is available in Cincinnati"
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Used Roadrunner for years and have always been unhappy with upload speed. Changed to Zoomtown for an increase to 768, but a drop in d/l to 5ish. Noticed a big difference in upload and little to none in down. Install went fine, then sent the package, I hooked it up and it works. I have the Westell 327w modem/router, but just use the modem option with my Zyxel X-550. No real problems. The modem records a few out packet errors now and again, but I really do not notice any issues. I hope Cincinnati Bell upgrades to a 10/1 speed soon!
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Review by cortana
Posted: 316 days ago
member for 1.1 years, 8 visits, last login: 34 days ago
Xenia,Greene,OH
$50 per month
about 9 days
Cincinnati Bell
"Easy install, provisioned a few hours early even. speed higher than expected"
"none yet"
"Good speed and value for my area"
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After getting fed-up with AT&T having incessant cross-talk on my line, I was ready to change providers to see if it would get any better.
Cincinnati Bell offered a 1 year deal (no contract) at $50 for phone and DSL monthly, free long distance, free caller ID and call waiting. Wireless gateway option was $50 more (rebated after 90 days service), and they offered a start date 9 days forward from the order time.
Cincinnati Bell took care of all the telco paperwork, and the DSL and number port was all painless and done 12 or so hours before they actually promised it.
Modem is a Westell 327W, new in box, delivered a day early. Wireless signal is strong and works everywhere in the house.
I wish every DSL company could make the install this trouble-free. With both AT&T and Speakeasy before (in other places) I've had a rash of random issues from line faults to provisioning errors. No problems here, at least.
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Review by mudtoe
UPDATED: 317 days ago
member for 2.9 years, 532 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Cincinnati,Clermont,OH
Contract price not specified.
about 120 days
Cincinnati Bell
"Once up and running it's very stable. Also works if power goes out as long as you have a UPS."
"Can be problems if not installed right at local C/O. Download speed not as fast as cable."
"Once done right it works all the time from then on. Speed could be better."
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I had Zoomtown in the 90s, and then switched to Road Runner cable. I built a new house further out in a county adjacent to Cincinnati, and Road Runner wasn't available, so I went back to Zoomtown. I went with the static IP option on Zoomtown because I needed to run a VPN, and the regular Zoomtown connections are often "double NATed" (i.e. the Zoomtown ADSL modem only presents your router a private address, not an internet address, which your router would then NAT again), which costs an extra $5 per month.
Once everything was up and running it's very stable. After the initial install problems were resolved (see below) the service has never been down as far as I know, and if the power goes out it still works as long as you have a UPS for your ADSL modem, which is a bonus versus Road Runner whose service goes down when the power goes out because they have equipment on the utility poles that need power. Download speed is stated at 5mb and I get about 4.3mb. Upload is stated at 768kb and I get close to that. Road Runner is offering about 7mb download right now, but only 384kb upload for their residential service.
The big downside with Zoomtown for me was the install. I had nothing but problems. I put the order in for the service when the house was about 3/4 complete. I was told that I'd have to be on a waiting list because the local C/O's equipment rack was full and they were going to have to swap out the existing DSLAMs with higher density equipment. This caused about a 60 day delay. When I finally got the service installed the speed varied wildly. I downloaded a test utility and found that about 4% of my packets were getting discarded, and the connection would drop every 70 minutes. It took me several calls to get this information to technical support and get past level one to someone who actually knew something. At first they blamed the problem on my in house wiring, so I had to move the ADSL modem to the dmark location and run a 50 foot ethernet cable to my equipment room in the basement. Problem persisted. Then they sent out a technician who replaced my Westell modem with a Lucent model. Same problem continued. Then I went through a few calls where they basically said that all they were guaranteeing with the service was an average of 128k download, and since I met that they were not going to pursue it further. Good thing for me I "knew" someone at Cincinnati Bell. I called and complained and then they sent out another technician who tested the line all the way back to the junction box in the neighborhood; still no luck. Finally a day after that my whole phone service goes down. I call on my cell phone to ask what's going on and nobody knows. Two hours later my phone service comes back on, the ADSL modem synchs up, and no more lost packets. It's worked perfectly ever since. When I called to find out what they did nobody has a record of my service ever being down or any repair ever taking place. I'm guessing that something was messed up at the local C/O and that they moved my connection to a different DSLAM port. However, nobody would ever fess up to the problem being on their end.
The bottom line to the story is that installation can be a big problem with Zoomtown, and that you have to really be a pest and stay on them in order to get things fixed, or they just blow you off.
If cable became available in my area I'd probably stick with Zoomtown at this point, despite the install problems. The service has been rock solid once the install issues were addressed. Also, since I use a VPN the upload speed is more important to me than the download speed, and Road Runner's upload speed is miserable. Of course if FIOS ever made its way to my door I'd switch in a minute, but since I live in an exurban area I doubt that's ever going to happen.
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